It can be hard to restrain yourself when faced with comments you just can't believe are coming out of a supposedly intelligent person's mouth! You get this intense desire to set the record straight. Just yesterday I read something (I won't say what or where) that misinterpreted a book quote so badly, that I was almost desperate to reply! ("Aarrgh... don't do it... click away... must... resist!...")

I think that for me a lot of the urge to educate comes from the pains I've endured in the last 20+ years in the IT industry for having let Microsoft run rampant and watching wave after wave of people run over horrible terrain, crying and screaming all the while, wondering why they're in such agony (and to be fair though, Bill Gates is one seriously smart business man).

Anybody who spends regular time here over a period soon learns that some threads are off topic and not worth opening, other, once-valuable, threads wear thin or become repetitive (or repeated with similar new threads opening) and aren't worth a re-visit.

They become like known pot holes on the road to work. You just steer around 'em. Easy.

On the other hand, there are newcomers -- several noobies register everry day, and gosh knows how many casual lurkers pop by. To many of these folks, such threads are just what they were looking for and appear fresh.

Don't slap them down, just move on to the next thread in the list. They're hardly forced on us as compulsory reading. Cheers. Neil

I think that for me a lot of the urge to educate comes from the pains I've endured in the last 20+ years in the IT industry for having let Microsoft run rampant and watching wave after wave of people run over horrible terrain, crying and screaming all the while, wondering why they're in such agony (and to be fair though, Bill Gates is one seriously smart business man).

Well, though I agree, I wouldn't dump it all on Bill Gates' lap... he was just taking advantage of what was a very dysfunctional system in the first place. Although that has a lot of parallels to those pirating ebooks...

Quote:

Originally Posted by neilmarr

On the other hand, there are newcomers -- several noobies register everry day, and gosh knows how many casual lurkers pop by. To many of these folks, such threads are just what they were looking for and appear fresh.

See, that's the thing: Newbies, asking those age-old questions, deserve answers, and I want them to understand that some of us don't create stories just for kicks and grins. But then the familiar faces show up, arguments ensue, and... there you are, before you know it, having that same discussion again, and you can't quite come up with that Absolute Closer that no one can contest, you don't want to walk away and give the impression that the other argument won, you don't want to just cuss out the other person and run, thereby conceding your position by default...

And the newbies come away thinking: "Man, what a bunch of loose screws around here!"

I think the thing is to say, "DRM... no DRM... piracy... no piracy... the issue at hand is to respect an author's desire to be able to make money from his work."

Well, though I agree, I wouldn't dump it all on Bill Gates' lap... he was just taking advantage of what was a very dysfunctional system in the first place. Although that has a lot of parallels to those pirating ebooks...

Oh, believe me, I don't "blame" Microsoft or Bill - I think he was brilliant and did take advantage of everything he could and 98% of the computer using consumers got dragged along for the ride by the mass of the tidal wave of other people. That said, it doesn't stop me championing against another era of undocumented lock-in